This year’s ACA Convention and Expo held in Seattle, Washington provided PDCflow an opportunity to survey attendees on the challenges they face in the accounts receivable management industry. PDCflow Account Executive Jeremy Fong, and Customer Success Specialist Matt Thomas, spoke to countless ARM professionals who all desire the same thing: a better functioning revenue cycle.

Attendees included a broad spectrum of professionals involved in today’s complex debt collection business from large multiple location agencies to small locally owned shops. Despite size or location, most attendees found they needed tools that could help shorten their revenue cycle and simplify work processes.

1. Enlist Digital Tools To Shorten The Revenue Cycle

ARM industry professionals are always looking for ways to increase payments and create shorter revenue cycles. One of the easiest ways is to implement technology to do the work for you. While some merchants may fear the adoption of technology will change the way their businesses are run, that’s not always bad.

ARM industry decision makers need to be in tune with the changing ways their customers prefer to make payments. Implementing digital tools such as customer online payment portals and IVR systems can keep revenue coming in long after business hours end. Using a digital signature product for payment authorizations is another way to speed up the collection process.

Rather than mailing out authorizations and waiting for a response, adopting a digital signature solution will drastically cut down on the time before a payment is collected. Not only this, but requesting authorizations and payments in one solution can increase the number of payments collected. By offering a quick and easy way to pay while debtors have their bill on their mind, merchants can increase the number of successful, painless collections their agents bring in each month.

2. Using An All-In-One Payment Processing Solution

It’s pretty common for ARM industry professionals to get each piece of their processing from a different vendor. However, combining all the features of your payment processing into one system can go a long way toward speeding up your revenue cycle.

Using a single system for all your processes is a great way to cut down on training time for new employees. One system for everything also makes accessing reports a much simpler task. Not only this, but with one system for credit card and ACH payments, reconciliation is quicker than ever.

A common request among ARM professionals is to provide the security certificates of the vendors being utilized. One vendor offering all the tools you need to quickly and efficiently accept inbound payments along with fulfilling compliance requirements, such as signed payment schedule agreements, can reduce the time needed to provide information to a potential client.

3. Find A Software Solution That Offers Great Ongoing Customer Support

Customer support might not be the first thing you think about when looking for ways to shorten your revenue cycle. But there’s nothing that can slow business down like an unanswered question about the systems used for everyday operations. Choosing a payment processing system that offers free training can get merchants up to speed on all the features their software has to offer. This is an important aspect of the customer service a company provides. However, the necessity for assistance stretches far beyond the onboarding process.

In the complicated world of payments, any hiccup may leave ARM professionals with questions. Just recently, there has been mention of a scam which convinced consumers that they could make payments online using federal reserve routing numbers. In instances like this or others, customer support from payment industry experts can help get to the bottom of unusual error codes and how to address them.

Merchants may encounter unusual decline codes, credit card networks may have connection issues, or those who reconcile accounts may simply have questions on how to access or read their reports. These and countless other instances may happen throughout an agency’s revenue cycle. If there are few or no customer support resources available, the cycle will take longer to reconcile. If the issues can not be resolved quickly, revenue throughout the cycle will plummet while merchants try to find the answers they need.

For more information on how a payment management solution can optimize your revenue cycle and improve workflow processes, you can download this Payment Processing Buyer’s Guide.

About PDCflow

PDCflow is a complete Payment Management Solution that is simple, fast, and secure, so your business gets paid faster. The application allows multi-channel payments, payment authorization with eSignatures, and document delivery for small business to enterprise – all from one central platform.